] Cray is not likely to garner much attention when it
] reports first-quarter earnings on April 28. Like its much
] larger competitors, Cray is in the computer business but
] at $155 million in sales, it's too small to register on
] most radars.
]
]
] But it should be. The company's sales have grown at an
] annualized 30% since being acquired by Tera Computer in
] early 2000. Even better, Cray (nasdaq: CRAY - news -
] people ) is building a system that will best the Japanese
] Earth Simulator computer and give the U.S. the title for
] world's fastest computer

If you're a geek like me, you had pictures of Cray's computers posted on your bedroom wall as a teenager. Cool to hear that one of the first X1's is going into Oak Ridge.

Cray's Quiet Revolution

] This ad is most definitely a nod to the filmmakers Peter
] Fischli and David Weiss. Their 1987 film, "The Way Things
] Go" is a 30-minute-long showing of a contraption they
] built out of household items.

VERY cool. I want to see the whole movie, not just the car commercial.

Honda's New Accord

] But the GPS system is also a vital--and growing--piece of
] business infrastructure. Consider for a moment that
] nearly every telecommunications network, from wireless
] phone networks to the data networks that make up the
] Internet, relies on the highly accurate clocks on the 27
] GPS satellites to keep its internal clocks correct, which
] helps data flow efficiently.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: GPS is perhaps one of the greatest military inventions to help benefit commercial life since the Internet.

GPS, The War And You

The Sound of Things to Come
By MARSHALL SELLA

No one ever notices what's going on at a Radio Shack. Outside a lonely branch of the electronics store, on a government-issue San Diego day in a strip mall where no one is noticing much of anything, a bluff man with thinning, ginger hair and preternaturally white teeth is standing on the pavement, slowly waving a square metal plate toward people strolling in the distance. ''Watch that lady over there,'' he says, unable to conceal his boyish pride for the gadget in his giant hand. ''This is really cool.''

Woody Norris aims the silvery plate at his quarry. A burly brunette 200 feet away stops dead in her tracks and peers around, befuddled. She has walked straight into the noise of a Brazilian rain forest -- then out again. Even in her shopping reverie, here among the haircutters and storefront tax-preparers and dubious Middle Eastern bistros, her senses inform her that she has just stepped through a discrete column of sound, a sharply demarcated beam of unexpected sound. ''Look at that,'' Norris mutters, chuckling as the lady turns around. ''She doesn't know what hit her.''

Norris is demonstrating something called HyperSonic Sound (HSS). The aluminum plate is connected to a CD player and an odd amplifier -- actually, a very odd and very new amplifier -- that directs sound much as a laser beam directs light. Over the past few years, mainly in secret, he has shown the device to more than 300 major companies, and it has slackened a lot of jaws. In December, the editors of Popular Science magazine bestowed upon HSS its grand prize for new inventions of 2002, choosing it over the ferociously hyped Segway scooter. It is no exaggeration to say that HSS represents the first revolution in acoustics since the loudspeaker was invented 78 years ago -- and perhaps only the second since pilgrims used ''whispering tubes'' to convey their dour messages.
.....
(Last month, A.T.C. cut a five-year, multimillion-dollar licensing agreement with General Dynamics, one of the giants of the military-industrial complex.)

The Sound of Things to Come

] This guide is the first in a series on the Art of Video
] Capture, Clean-up, and Compression.

Ars Technica: Guide to Video Capturing - Page 1 - (03/2003)

] But last week's WorldCom tutorial may beat all the
] others. Thanks to its announcement on Thursday, we now
] know in actual, quantifiable, stupefying terms, just how
] much WorldCom overpaid for the telecommunications network
] it built.

hmmm... seems to me that they may be writing down the cost of the network in order to get their balance sheet just to balance.

From WorldCom, an Amazing View of a Bloated Industry

A great report from the CDT (Center for Democracy & Technology) that analyzed behaviors that increase the chance of receiving spam. This is a PDF file that's worth reading through. The bottom line: don't post your email address on a website.

Why Am I Getting All This Spam?

] The wireless e-mail, among the 1 billion sent each day on
] the continent, can freeze or completely disable two cell
] phones made by German handset maker Siemens, spokesman
] Jacob Rice said here on Tuesday.
]
] The e-mails contain a single word, taken from the phone's
] language menu, surrounded by quote marks and preceded by
] an asterisk, such as "*English" or "*Deutsch", Siemens
] said.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Killer stalks cell phones in Europe

] There is a compelling analogy between building and
] software construction. It is not new, but it has never
] taken root and bloomed. The analogy is not just
] convenient or superficial. It is truly profound. It not
] only raises the right questions, it has the answer to
] what has been called "The Software Crisis."

Worldwide Institute of Software Architects - Philosophy

] But just like it was in 1995 or so when the World Wide
] Web first burst upon the scene, separating the good stuff
] from the useless drivel is a big chore. No one has yet
] counted how many of these personal diaries of deep or
] not-so-deep thoughts there are, but there are thousands,
] and navigating the blogosphere is a daunting task for the
] uninitiated.

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